


And Yet the Books Will Be Theirs

by yet_intrepid



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Books, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Inspired by Poetry, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-20
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 20:16:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1661147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam grieves the loss of Jess through grieving the loss of the books they shared. Early s1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Yet the Books Will Be Theirs

**Author's Note:**

> Poem in the text is by Czeslaw Milosz, a Polish poet who lived and taught in California until close to his death in 2004.

A fragment of a poem comes into Sam’s head one day and he starts up out of his chair, turning left like he would have in the apartment to get from the couch to the bookshelves. But there are no bookshelves, because this is a no-name motel in rural Wisconsin, and even if he were back in Palo Alto there would still be no bookshelves.

Every fragment of the life he built there died with Jess.

Sam falls back into his chair, thinking of the books because he can’t bear to think of her. Her volumes, collected from childhood, neatly grouped into clusters by subject with the clusters themselves arranged by color. God, but Jess was a rainbow. Everything about her was vibrant, streaking into the thunderstorm he called his life.

His books, on the opposite side of the TV. Mostly textbooks at first, but with a steadily growing assortment of others—used, but always interesting, and in decent shape. Better shape than Jess’s, sometimes. She loved her books to pieces.

And then, above the TV, their books. Presents from friends without a specified recipient, shared  textbooks, a hardbound copy of  _Lord of the Rings_  that they both contributed to buying, things they came across and at once communicated with a glance: we need this. The intent, not the finances, made the books theirs.

Now Sam’s library is even smaller than it was pre-Stanford, just the two volumes he threw into his duffel when he left with Dean and another one of Jess’s that was on loan to a friend. None of them are ones he’d pick for sentimental value, either, but he guesses sentiment will have to make do with what it’s given.

He thinks about buying a new copy of a book that really mattered to them (Neruda’s love sonnets,  _A Wrinkle in Time_ , Eliot’s  _Four Quartets_ ), but he’s already closed his bank account, he no longer has a mailing address, and they’re nowhere near a bookstore with even the slightest chance of carrying things like international poetry.

So he reaches for his computer again (this job is so small that there’s no internet research to do, and Dean is out interviewing the sheriff or the mayor or something), and he searches restlessly, desperately. Names of poems, snatches of lines he remembers. There’s one—he’s sure of it—about books, and fire.

He types and clicks away, half dreading.

_And yet the books will be there on the shelves,_

Sam clicks. Scans down a few lines.

                                                           _separate beings,  
That appeared once,_   _still wet,_  
 _As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn_

And in that barest moment, her voice is surrounding him like the smell of waffles and fruit when they made breakfast together on Saturdays, like the thick leaves of evening primroses or like salt wind:

_And, touched, coddled, began to live_   
_In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,_   
_Tribes on the march, planets in motion._

She’s laughing gently at his nervous habits and begging him to get rid of spiders and telling him he’s  _phenomenally intelligent_  or  _killer smart_  or  _brilliant beyond belief._  She’s lecturing him about the importance of vitamin C and holding forth in support of some city council member whose name Sam has forgotten and suggesting costumes for him as she twirls in that silly nurse outfit so the skirt flares out. She’s putting vocabulary definitions to catchy tunes. She’s calling out questions from his study guides. She’s reading poetry.

_“We are,” they said, even as their pages_   
_Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame_   
_Licked away their letters. So much more durable_   
_Than we are, whose frail warmth_   
_Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes._

But no, Jess isn’t frail. She was never frail. Her hand in his was a lifeline, pulsing with laughter and love. Her will was strong and her spirit was strong and her joy, her joy was the strongest he has ever touched. So her memory too will be strong, warm like a sun that outlasts fire.

Sam grew up with dispersion and perishing. He knows he’s meant to disappear, to go out hard and fast and young. It might be fast or slow, bang or whimper, but he’s going to go. Hard luck to him, but no loss to most.

Jess, though. Jess was meant to last.

_I imagine the earth when I am no more:_   
_Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant,_   
_Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley._

“Job’s a bust.”

Sam jerks out of his thoughts. Dean’s come in, tossed his jacket on the bed, and is leaning on the back of Sam’s chair.

“Oh really?” Sam manages.

“Yeah.” Dean shakes his head. “Mayor was behind the whole thing; no wonder we weren’t getting EMF. Get your stuff together and we’ll head out. I think I have a lead in Indiana.”

“Sure.” Sam gets up, shuts his computer. “Hey Dean, on the way, can we go through Madison, maybe Chicago? Someplace with bookstores.”

Dean looks at him a second, then shrugs. “Sure,” he says. “Long as you don’t decide to set up house.”

Sam laughs a little. “I won’t. Promise.”

_Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,  
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights._

He emerges from a Barnes and Noble in Madison with a book he’s never read before. He remembers Jess talking about it, though, so he drops seventeen dollars on Ilya Kaminsky’s  _Dancing in Odessa_ and takes it back to the car. Dean’s not there. Sam gets in.

He reaches for a pen, scribbles on the back of an old receipt to make sure it works. Then he writes his name in the front cover,  _Sam_ , and then hesitates a moment, his hand shaking, before finishing:  _and Jess._

In spite of fires on the horizon, in his dreams, in the dark places of his heart, the books are going to live.


End file.
